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Saturday, January 29, 2011

The Hills and Victory

Hubs had a 4:15 colloquium yesterday (Really? Who schedules something for 4:15 on a Friday??) so yesterday evening was a perfect opportunity for me to squeeze in a run.

Due to the weather this week (here and here) I didn't run Wednesday night, and I didn't get to the gym for boot camp Thursday night. So, I did a little schedule juggling and made Wednesday my rest day.

Thursday night instead of going to the gym for boot camp, I found Jillian Michaels' 6 Week 6 Pack, part 1 on Exercise TV On Demand.

Not saying it wasn't tough, but boot camp is longer, so after I finished the 40 min workout, I threw in some extras like 20 chest push ups (10 on knees, 10 on toes), and 20 tricep push ups (knees), plus a minute and 15 second plank.

Back to Friday-
Since I missed out on my Wednesday speed work, I did it Friday. Except as per Mr. Higdon, I am subbing in hill workouts in place of some of my regularly scheduled speed work or tempo runs. (My April Half will have some hills).

It was 33 out and snowing, but it wasn't really sticking to the ground and it was kind of pretty. However, they were HUGE snowflakes, and I took several flakes to the eyeball while running up hill. They were cold on my eye.

From the above-referenced link,

"Hills: Some hill training will help strengthen your quads and build speed. Look for a hill between 200 and 400 meters long. Jog or walk an equal distance between each repeat...You can substitute hill repeats for any of the interval workouts, or even in place of a Tempo Run or two if you want."

Here's what my workout looked like:

{click to enlarge}

As I've mentioned before, I live at the bottom of a hill. The hill is about .20-.25 miles long (~320-400 meters) There are several parallel streets on the hill for me to choose from. So I ran up and down the hill, six times. I ran harder when going up, and took it easy while running back down, or running over to the next street.

I'm not sure if the elevation is that impressive or not, but it's what I've got, and it was way harder than running on a flat road! I was pretty pleased with how quickly my heart rate recovered on the downhill too.

Saturday-
We were going to meet a friend at a favorite brewery halfway between us. Turned out our friend wasn't going to be able to make it due to some car problems, but we were already in the car, so we went anyway.

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